A social media marketing plan needs a lot of work because you have to build it from the ground up. As a small business, it doesn’t have to be intimidating, it’s absolutely doable! For the marketing newbies, we’ve simplified how to create a social media marketing plan into 5 steps!
A social media marketing plan contains everything you need to execute on your social media platforms. Creating a plan should be your top priority before attempting any marketing project. Otherwise, you risk losing a lot of time and resources, and your marketing campaign ends up directionless. Here are some action steps to guide you through creating one!
Set your Goals
Without goals, it’s hard to know whether your strategy is actually achieving anything. Having objective and actionable goals should be the start of any marketing plan, as it can help you in the direction you want your platforms to go.
Consider the aspects in which social media can help your business:
- Increase brand awareness
- Improve the quality of audience engagement
- Increase sales and/or lead generation
- More convenient customer support
You can build your goals around these and identify the metrics you can use to track their improvement.
You can even hire someone to create a Social Media Audit and Strategy to assess your channels and give you professional suggestions to improve the quality of content you’ll put out on social media.
Choose your social media platforms
You can’t have it all! The best thing to do is to choose the platforms that will matter most to your business. Consider where do most of your potential customers hang out, how much time do you want to spend on that social network daily, and what skills and resources do your business offer that corresponds to what the demographic needs.
At this point, you should have already done incredible amounts of research on your target audience. Ask yourself, which platforms do they hang out with the most? Your business should probably be there too!
Fill out your profiles
Your social media should represent your professionalism. Having a complete profile makes it easier for your audience to know you’re down for serious business!
Make sure you have all the backlinks to your websites and other social media, a clear profile picture, and a cover photo (mind the dimensions!). The photos and visual templates you use must be consistent and familiar across your platforms.
To make sure you have all your visual templates ready and consistent, why not ask for help from a graphic designer!
Aside from your visuals, be sure to provide an informative and easy-to-understand info section. Tell them what your business does, use keywords, and make it personal.
Plan your content calendar
By now, you should identify how many times you should post a day. How often to post, what time, and what content you need to put out. Remember, there’s no one size fits all for a posting strategy, see what works for your competitors, and adapt only what will work towards your marketing goals. When planning a posting timeline and content plan, it should be doable for your team and appropriate for your audience.
If you find this to be more taxing than other jobs, you can ask for the assistance of a Social Media Manager to help you create and execute your plan smoothly.
Develop an engagement strategy
Having consistent and quality engagement within your social media keeps audiences happy. It also encourages more people to follow you, seeing how invested you are in listening to your audience! Don’t be dormant on social media, but you don’t have to overwork yourself. Manage it with the help of your team, or plan out a time of day designated to go online.
